by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
The concept was inspired by the title of a book a member of the mayor’s staff was reading.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with ‘100 Great Ideas’ for Jacksonville?” commented someone at the conference table and with that, the new “Great Ideas” page on the City’s Web site, coj.net, was born.
In the first week, the “Great Ideas” button has already been pushed almost 100 times and the ideas submitted represent a cross-section of the community’s suggestions for ways to improve Jacksonville.
The program has also increased traffic on the City’s site. According to figures provided by the mayor’s office, the site received 8,004 page visits the week before the “Great Ideas” button debuted and 9,810 page visits the week after the city-wide suggestion box was launched.
The mayor’s page was viewed 1,508 times post-launch compared to 999 times during the previous week.
The ideas cover a wide range of topics, but it’s obvious there are a few hot-button issues out there.
Many of the ideas include adding to the inventory of parks and other recreational facilities the City offers.
One person suggests Duval County should have public dog parks like there are in Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine and even volunteered to help maintain such a park if it were built. Another suggestion is to bring a Six Flags-style theme park to town to snag tourists who drive through Jacksonville on their way to Central Florida.
Another suggestion is to “Construct a huge Ferris wheel near the center of the city” because Jacksonville would have the first one in America, “and would be the talk of the country.”
Another suggestion is to add more fitness-oriented structures to existing parks and include the element in the design of future public parks.
Nine people submitted their ideas for public transportation, including five citizens who think a light rail system would be the best way to move people around the county.
Two people suggested more buses running more routes, one person said buses should run later in order to get late-night revelers home after partying Downtown, one person suggested buses should run on fuel that could be made from used vegetable oil discarded by restaurants and one person suggested dissolving the Jacksonville Transportation Authority entirely and outsourcing Jacksonville’s public transportation to the people who run the system in Atlanta.
There have also been several practical suggestions submitted, including lighting one-way street signs to make them more visible after dark and including the direction of traffic flow on Downtown street maps.
Other ideas sent in so far would have the City build a “plasma arc vitrification machine” that could “turn all waste into clean products and electricity the city could market” to reducing the number of administrators (AMIOs) in City government and the number of City vehicles provided to employees, particularly those who drive the vehicles home.
Since Sunday night four people logged on to send their suggestions on how to alleviate traffic congestion brought on by the Mathews Bridge grating project. While one person suggested the temporary use of river taxis, cruise ships, ferries and privately-owned vessels to move people across the river, three suggested rerouting traffic over the two lanes that remain open on the bridge to one-way Westbound during morning rush hour and then reversing the traffic to one-way Eastbound during the afternoon.
Heather Webb, special assistant to Mayor John Peyton, checks the e-mails several times a day, then forwards all of them to the mayor and to a department head or division chief. Each idea will be evaluated and a return response detailing the City’s opinion as to the feasibility of the suggestion will be sent back to the person who submitted it.
“We really didn’t know what to expect when we started the site. In the past, most people who contacted the City did it to complain about something or to get something fixed,” she said. “Some of the ideas won’t be able to be implemented, but it’s a way for citizens to learn about how the government works.”